CEO annual compensation is computed using the “options realized” compensation series, which includes salary, bonus, restricted stock grants, options exercised and long-term incentive payouts for CEOs at the top 350 U.S. firms ranked by sales.

Ratio by sector

Average of CEOs’ and median employees’ annual pay by sector as of April 6 from Proxy Insight.

5,908-to-1
The CEO with the highest ratio on April 6 was Weight Watchers International Inc.’s Mindy Grossman, whose $35 million take-home pay was 5,908 times her median worker’s (most employees work part time). The second-highest ratio was 4,987 to 1 for Mattel Inc. CEO Margaret Geogiadis. Most of Matell’s workforce is in Asia.

Opinions on CEO compensation

The following responses are from a survey conducted by the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and included in a report, “Americans and CEO Pay: 2016 Public Perception Survey on CEO Compensation.”

CEO packages

Salary is only a fraction of the take-home compensation for CEOs. In 2016, two CEOs made more than $100 million in take-home pay. The majority of pay for the top CEOs was in stock. Below is Bloomberg’s breakdown for the three highest-paid CEOs in 2016 – the most recent year with complete totals for the top 500 companies.

Current top pay
Each year, the Equilar 100 list of CEO compensation examines executive pay. These figures are from companies that have filed annual proxy statements by March 31 and are from April 11. Here are the top 30 CEOs, with pay in millions and the ratio listed in parentheses where available.

Kurt Snibbe is a visual journalist for Southern California News Group. Snibbe has won several medals in international graphics competitions and was a staff cartoonist for ESPN.com. Snibbe began with The Orange County Register in 1997, left in 2008 and returned in 2013.

Margot Roosevelt covers economic news. She has been a staff reporter at The Orange County Register since 2012. Before that, she was on staff at the Los Angeles Times, covering environmental news. Earlier jobs: Congressional reporter for the Washington Post; foreign and national correspondent for Time Magazine.